A Framework for Climate Smart Coastal Restoration: Great Lakes Case Study

Climate change has become the defining conservation issue of this century. Given current trends, the environment in which the planet’s living resources – humans, plants, and animals alike – will exist in the future will be vastly different from the one we have experienced over the past several centuries during which our conservation traditions evolved. Given this new reality, state and federal agencies, non-governmental organizations, and others concerned with conservation are challenged with designing and implementing projects that will maximize the effectiveness of restoration and acquisition investments under both current and expected future climate conditions (i.e., projects that are “climate-smart”). This presentation will highlight a framework for designing climate-smart coastal restoration projects based on technical guidance developed by the National Wildlife Federation and EcoAdapt for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We will provide examples of how this framework is being applied in the U.S. Great Lakes region.